It is a very neat and powerful piece.
In the article, he ‘proposes a model to explain the
widespread phenomenon of unwarranted self confidence’. In 1948, Skinner carried
out an experiment with some hungry pigeons where he fed them a pellet of corn
at regular intervals. As a result some odd behaviours were ‘reinforced’ (to use
the behaviourist vernacular) such as head swaying or hopping from one foot to
another. These behaviours persisted long after the corn stopped coming. So in
this experiment a pigeon’s random behaviour was reinforced by an unconnected
reward.
Paul Whitby then goes on to propose that this is what
happens with psychotherapy. Psychotherapy (as opposed to more rigorously tested cognitive behavioural therapy techniques) is very popular and many (both
therapists and clients) swear by it. Many psychotherapists assert the value of
their craft despite numerous objective studies suggesting otherwise. Paul’s
view is that in some cases, psychotherapy clients will get better, as they
would have done anyway. These naturally occurring remissions are the equivalent
of the pellets of corn for the pigeons, and result in collusion between client
and therapist over the value and importance of the therapy. This is very
challenging stuff and I don’t intend to enter into the debate here about the
value or otherwise of the various psychotherapies in use today. I will leave
that to others.
But I do want to pick up on Paul Whitby’s comment towards
the end of his article where he says the “model is also applicable outside the
healing arts. Probably the most fruitful field for Assumed Usefulness is
business and management.”
Since first reading this article more than 20 years ago,
I have long wondered the same.
How many of the everyday actions taken by leaders have
been randomly reinforced in their pasts by performance improvements that
happened through happen chance (or even despite what the leaders did)? How many
strategies, plans, protocols and policies have merely seemed to work by the
random occurrence of a few positive results?
This debate is raging at the moment in police leadership
circles. My colleague Peter Neyroud (erstwhile Chief Constable and Chief
Executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency) and David Weisburd
(Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason
University) have written an article in support of “Police
Science: Toward a New Paradigm”. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/228922.pdf.
Malcolm Sparrow puts forward an alternative view that instead of ‘scientific
policing’ the focus should remain with ‘problem orientated policing’
(“Governing Science” http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232179.pdf) Both
articles are well worth putting the time aside to read in full and weigh up the
arguments yourself.
But that debate is not really about whether the actions
taken by managers and leaders should be evaluated but more about who should
carry out the evaluation and in what context. I suspect that all three authors
would agree that there is no room for Assumed Competence in police (or indeed
any other) leadership.
So my questions to you are these:
- How do you know you are a useful leader?
- What evidence or feedback are you drawing on to assert or even prove this?
- How can you demonstrate a causal link between the policies (or whatever) that you have devised / implemented and the results achieved?
- Indeed, do you agree that there should or ever can be a causal link?
- Or would you assert that leadership (and all the actions that arise from it) is an art and not a science: leadership is just too ineffable and complex to be evaluated by reductionist methodologies?
I wonder...
(You may also like to see my article below about bankers’
bonuses and the questions that Boards and investors should still be asking)
No comments:
Post a Comment